How South Carolina women's basketball reversed the rivalry with UConn
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When South Carolina faces UConn Sunday, the Gamecocks have the opportunity to flip the script in the rivalry.
For the third time in program history, South Carolina has started the season 22-0. And for the third time in program history, the UConn Huskies stand in the way of 23-0.
South Carolina started 22-0 in 2014-15 and 2015-16. Both times, South Carolina ended the UConn game 22-1. The Gamecocks fell 87-62 in snowy Storrs, CT in 2015, and a year later they lost 66-54 in Columbia in front of the first sellout of Colonial Life Arena.
This year, South Carolina will again travel to frigid Hartford looking for its first win over the Huskies in Connecticut, its best start ever, and to tie the longest winning streak in school history (29 games).
Before it was a rivalry, the Huskies and Gamecocks played a home-and-home in 2007-08. The Huskies won the first game 97-39 at home. The game was so lopsided that the next year, Dawn Staley’s first in Columbia, when the Huskies won again 77-48, players didn’t even remember playing the Gamecocks the year before.
The series went on hiatus until Staley thought she had a team that could compete with UConn. By 2014, South Carolina had won its first SEC title, so it was time to see how South Carolina measured up against UConn.
The Gamecocks were much closer than they were six seasons earlier, but they still couldn’t beat the Huskies.
Over the ensuing seasons, South Carolina had good teams, it had decent teams, it had great teams, and national championship teams. But no matter what, they all lost to UConn. None of them even came within single digits.
The 2019 recruiting class of Laeticia Amihere, Brea Beal, Aliyah Boston, Zia Cooke, and Olivia Thompson changed that. In front of a raucous sellout crowd the following February, the #1 Gamecocks routed the #5 Huskies.
“They didn’t flinch,” Staley said of her freshmen. “They never thought about anything other than what we had to do to win.”
Now it was a rivalry, and Geno Auriemma was impressed.
“We’ve come down when it was sold out and blown them out,” he said after the game. “South Carolina played way better than Connecticut.”
“Our class, coming in, it was kind of a surreal feeling playing any of those teams because we grew up watching them,” Beal said this week. “It’s a good feeling to play our best basketball against those teams.”
UConn got revenge a year later when Boston missed a tip-in at the end of regulation and the Huskies were able to pull away in overtime. Maybe the 2020 game was a fluke.
That was certainly the message when the #1 Gamecocks and #2 Huskies met in the Bahamas for Battle4Atlantis Championship. The AP delayed its poll by a day to accommodate the game, a move interpreted by almost everyone as a sign the poll organizers expected UConn to win.
South Carolina won going away.
The teams got a rematch in the national championship game. Auriemma had never lost a national championship game, surely he would restore order.
Neither has Staley, and South Carolina led the entire game.
Now the Gamecocks have won three of the last four matchups, including on the sport’s biggest stage. They are the favorites not only to beat the Huskies this weekend but to repeat as national champions. The Gamecocks would become the first repeat champion since, you guessed it, the Huskies.
The tables have turned, but not quite 180 degrees. South Carolina still hasn’t gotten to 23-0 and still hasn’t won at Connecticut.
“Over the years this particular class just committed to each other,” Staley said. “When you have that type of commitment and you just want to win, you find yourself winning some games you hadn’t won before. It still stands true. We haven’t won up there. Throughout it all. We’ve won here, we’ve won on a neutral site. I hope we’re able to get the trifecta with this group. They deserve it.”
